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Steve is the Senior Director of Corporate Data & Advanced Analytics at Worthington Steel, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Steve is tasked with driving impactful analytics across the enterprise through strong collaboration, transformative project work and a strategic focus on education and empowerment, including the Data Literacy Initiative.

Prior to joining Worthington, Steve was a high school mathematics and physics teacher for 13 years, earned his PhD in Science Education from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois, and later joined the faculty of Middle Tennessee State University.

Steve is a proud graduate of The Data Lodge’s Base Camp program.

Brent's career has taken him on a winding journey from pastoral ministry to data science and data literacy to people analytics.

He completed his undergraduate degree in Preaching and Church Leadership at Johnson University in Knoxville, TN, followed by an MBA from the University of Tennessee and an MS in Predictive Analytics from Northwestern University. Brent has performed analytics work within a number of different industries, including healthcare, supply chain, and services. He has been with Chick-fil-A for 8 years and is currently tasked with building a People Analytics function, after having served as an analytics practitioner and a Data Literacy Program Lead for several years.

Brent has been married to his wife, Brittany, for 15 years, and they have 7 children that keep them on their toes. Brent's passion is to help others discover and become the best versions of themselves, and today, he gets to use data and analytics to help Chick-fil-A do that at scale!

Rana Glasgal has nearly 25 years of experience in higher education data and analytics. She is currently the Vice Provost for Data & Analytics at Northeastern University, facilitating institutional decision making by providing integrated analysis and research. Her team, University Decision Support, provides analytics, institutional research, data governance, data literacy, and survey research for the university.

Prior to holding this position, Rana spent over 18 years at Stanford University, first as Associate Vice Provost for Institutional Research and Decision Support, and then as Assistant Vice President for Workforce Analytics, designing and promoting the use of analytics for decision making in academic human resources. Before Stanford, she was a consultant with Decision Focus Incorporated. Rana is active as a volunteer for her alma mater, Cornell University, serving as an alumni-elected trustee on the Cornell Board of Trustees and as a lifetime member of the Cornell University Council. Rana holds her B.S. and M.Eng. from Cornell in Operations Research.

Outside of work, Rana enjoys playing tennis and ice hockey, reading, and making friends with other peoples’ cats.

Susan Gracia is the Senior Associate Director of Data Literacy at Northeastern University, where she leads the creation and execution of a university-wide data literacy program. In this role, she develops data literacy learning opportunities, assessments, learning paths, and certifications, while also providing instruction and helping foster data community across the university. Susan previously served as an Assistant Teaching Professor in the MPS in Data Analytics and EdD programs at Northeastern University, where she developed and taught graduate courses in analytics, data mining, data visualization, text mining, research design, and assessment. She is a visiting professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and formerly held the position of Associate Professor and Director of Assessment at Rhode Island College.

Beyond academia, Susan was the Lead Instructor - Corporate Data at Pragmatic Institute, where she taught business-driven analysis to data teams and data literacy to business leaders. Additionally, she has been an instructor for Data Literacy, Inc., teaching Data Literacy Fundamentals and Data Literacy 1 and authored a six-module course, "Data Strategy: Leverage AI for Business," for the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and a Data Foundations course for Dataquest. She also has extensive experience conducting research, program evaluation, and assessment projects in a variety of settings.

A former French and English as a Second Language teacher, Susan holds an MA in Applied Linguistics, as well as a PhD in Educational Measurement, Research, and Evaluation from Boston College and certificates in Data Science from the University of California Irvine and Predictive Analytics in R from Cornell University. Her credentials also include certification as a Data Literacy Program Lead from The Data Lodge. Susan is passionate about empowering individuals and organizations with the skills to confidently understand, interpret, and leverage data effectively in today's world.

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Sarah serves as Managing Director of Data Science at Youth Villages and is committed to using data to help children and families live successfully. Her work involves leading the development of business intelligence applications and increasing effective use of the data by strengthening data literacy throughout the organization.

In addition, she manages the agency’s research activities and oversees the outcome evaluation process that monitors long-term outcomes achieved by the youth and families served by the agency’s programs.

She earned her Ph.D. in Health Outcomes and Policy Research from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Susan Lee-Rife (she/her) leads the Data Strategy team with Hennepin County’s Department of Integrated Data and Analytics. Hennepin County is Minnesota’s most populous county, extending from Minneapolis to its suburbs and outlying cities to the west. Susan and her team help to build staff capacity to make data-informed decisions by fostering data literacy, providing technical assistance, and creating resources to build a strong data culture.

Susan has also led strategic initiatives in disparities reduction, health equity, and program evaluation. Before joining the county, she worked with international and non-governmental organizations in health, equity, and systems change in low-income countries.

Susan holds a PhD in sociology and demography from the University of Michigan, an MHS degree in population studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and a BA (honors) degree in international relations from the University of Minnesota.

Doug Llewellyn is the CEO of Data Society Group, a pioneering platform that empowers companies to harness the full potential of data and AI, is a seasoned leader in the business information sector.

With a proven track record of delivering exceptional business value and maximizing investor returns, Doug has joined forces with Growth Catalyst Partners to create a new platform dedicated to advancing data leadership and fostering data-driven organizations. His people-centric approach to driving results has led multiple companies to successful exits, even amidst challenging market conditions.

By cultivating a company culture where employees are deeply invested in the company's mission, Doug ensures alignment among employees, customers, and investors.

Founding The Data Lodge in 2019, Valerie is as committed to data literacy as it gets. With train-the-trainer bootcamps, and a peer community, she’s certifying the world’s first Data Literacy Program Leads.

In 2023, The Data Lodge was acquired as the basis of a newly formed venture, Data Society Group (DSG), aimed at fostering data and AI literacy and cultural change at scale. Valerie is excited to also serve as the Chief Strategy Officer of DSG.

Previously, Valerie was a Gartner Research VP in the CDO team where she pioneered the Data Literacy research and was awarded Gartner’s Top Thought Leadership Award (2018). Valerie has more than 30 years of experience in consulting leadership and telecommunications.

Valerie holds a B.S. in Math (SUNY College, Buffalo) and an M.S. in Applied Math (New Mexico State). She lives between the Adirondacks in Upstate NY, and Sarasota, FL with her husband Brian, and their yellow lab, Cooper, the Lodge mascot.

Sheri Marshall is the Head of Product Safety Data & Analytics for General Motors where she leads a team of 40 data scientists and analysts. Her team develops AI/ML techniques to mine billions of records of unstructured and structured data to identify emerging issues, support investigations, and inform future design decisions to improve the vehicle safety. Earlier this year, Sheri was identified by CDO Magazine as one of the 2024 Champions of Data in the Midwest.

Prior to this role, Sheri was GM’s Head of Global Analytic Capability Development in which she created and launched GM’s corporate initiative to increase data literacy and analytic acumen across the enterprise, a key competency for success in the digital age. Sheri built GM’s highly active analytics community from the ground up to its current membership of over 1,300 employees worldwide, empowering analysts to collaborate across silos and time zones. She established GM’s council of Analytics Leaders to provide a unified approach to addressing systemic data and analytic challenges.

She joined General Motors in 1989 as a Plant Statistician, after earning a B.S in Mathematics and a M.S.in Applied Statistics from the University of Tennessee and held many analytic positions across a wide variety of business units.

Together with Kabria Baumgartner and Dan Cohen, Uta G. Poiger leads the Mellon-funded initiative "Reckonings: A Local History Platform for the Community Archivist." Her work focuses on new community-engaged frameworks for the humanities, supported by digital technologies.

Poiger has held a number of administrative leadership roles at Northeastern. In her role as Special Advisor to the Provost on Humanics in 2023/34, Poiger worked with colleagues, students and partners across Northeastern’s global campus system to foster signature educational initiatives in the context of Northeastern’s experiential learning model and the university’s New Academic Plan, Experience Unleashed. Together with James Hackney, she led Northeastern University’s Presidential Council on Diversity and Inclusion from 2013 to 2024.

From 2012 to 2023, Poiger served as Dean of the College of Social Science and Humanities at Northeastern University. With the college’s faculty, staff and students, she worked to enhance the college’s and the university’s leadership in the Experiential Liberal Arts. As the organizational philosophy and integrative educational model of the college, the Experiential Liberal Arts is intertwined with Northeastern’s mission in Humanics. Under her leadership, the college developed three areas of strategic focus: the intersections of resilience and sustainability; cultural transformations, governance and globalization; and network science, digital humanities and information ethics.

Poiger holds a PhD in History from Brown University and an MA in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Mr. Erik Price has been serving the US Federal Government for over 20 years. Through that time, he has championed various emerging technology and information management initiatives, supported workforce planning, worked in a technical computing center at an FFRDC, and has been recognized as a disrupter focused on innovation and the future state.

After serving at multiple agencies, Mr. Price joined the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to lead a digital records management program, to ensure the materials reflecting valued mission and business work are stored, managed, preserved, and remain discoverable. He then served under the Chief Data Officer (CDO) to lead the Intelligence Community (IC) Data Acumen strategic initiative to ensure all workforce members, regardless of job function, possess knowledge to support a data-informed organization. In this role he completed a comprehensive assessment of data acumen across the enterprise and focused on bringing foundational data skills to diverse groups of partners.

Mr. Price chairs the IC Data Management Lexicon working group, which provides a common understanding and consistent use of data management terms across the IC and with its partners. Under his leadership, the working group produced the first major update to the lexicon in over 2 years, incorporating modern industry data terminology and concepts. He also served as chair of the DoD-IC Ontologies Working Group, to promote and leverage Data Ontologies to support data interoperability and federated searching. Here he was instrumental in the first ever formal agreement between the DoD CDAO and IC CDO on baseline ontology standards.

Mr. Price is currently the Deputy Chief of the Innovation and Analytics Group, for the IC’s Human Capital program. In this role he champions the use of data-informed decisions and reporting for workforce needs and injects innovation to posture the IC for the workforce of the future. Academically, Mr. Price holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science, both in Systems Engineering, from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He is based in the Washington D.C. area.